Vietnam market down for another day as Asian stocks suffer new crush

The benchmark VN-Index closed 9 percent lower than a week ago.

Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index was down nearly 1.9 percent on Friday, the fourth plunge this week as the global sell-off continues to doom Asian stocks.

Index closed the week at 1,004, a 19.3 point drop from Thursday.

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, Vietnam’s main bourse, started the transaction day in red, with a 5 percent dive in the first half an hour.

VN-Index has gone through a dark week and only saw a slight recovery on Wednesday, sending it down 9 percent from the previous week, when Vietnam was the only Southeast Asian stock market with double-digit percentage gains this year. The slide caused a nearly VND280 trillion ($12.3 billion) loss from the market.

“Complicated developments are putting investors at a crossroads. They want to hold and wait for the market to recover, but are also worried that the slide will take long,” an analyst said.

Vietnam’s stock market will reopen on Monday before a one-week close for the Lunar New Year from Wednesday.

Vietnam has been one of the hardest hit in the region after an overnight plunge on Wall Street triggered a rout in equities worldwide on Monday.

The market shed 5 percent to record its steepest fall in nearly two and a half years on Monday, the biggest fall in Southeast Asia.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 4.0 percent and the blue-chip CSI300 ended the day down 4.3 percent. At one point, both were down more than 6 percent, which was the biggest single-day dive for the two in two years.